~37 years since I've had anything which was confirmed as flu - last time I had flu proper I was 6 or 7, whenever proper flu as gone around since I've seemingly been immune to it. Sadly didn't get away without getting COVID - the first time was pretty grim though ever since it has been mild symptoms wise other than the fatigue.
We all got the flu about 3 years ago (confirmed when my dad ended up in hospital).
I never want to get it again, between the flu itself and trying to care for my father I was trashed for well over a month and took a lot longer to fully recover (I basically couldn't take the time I needed to recover because I was trying to look after the old guy*).
That was with the flu jab, IIRC that year it was a very different strain to what had been expected.
Far too many people don't understand and don't care to understand the mechanics in play with these kind of diseases either, especially when high quality studies weren't being expedited to understand the disease and make better informed decisions.
I don't think people realise how close we might have been to a true catastrophic disaster if the disease had been very slightly different, which it had all potential to be, and how you can't react to that after you see the signs because especially if you aren't expediting those studies the disease is always effectively a step ahead of you - the same kind of "poison lag" which contributed to the Chernobyl disaster where they waited for the instruments to show the danger before reacting to it but by that point the pressure was there in the system which couldn't be stopped.
This is part of the reason I was so worried about it.
As it turns out it wasn't quite that bad for many people with the initial infection, but it does seem to have done a number of a lot of people's general/long term health which was being pointed to even in the first couple of months when autopsies were showing the damage it was doing to the lungs, and then other organs - you might survive much of that damage, but it's going to affect your health for a long time until it heals (if it does).
Honestly it's like the people that don't understand how many of the "childhood diseases" have the potential to be disastrous if you haven't had the vaccines, because they've usually had the benefit of a couple of generations of people being vaccinated, and thus never saw the outcome of unvaccinated meases etc. One of my mum's older friends was the only survivor of her family in the Spanish flu, I will never forget her words on vaccines "get them so your family don't go through what mine did" (paraphrasing slightly, she was much more scathing, and the only time I ever heard her use even a mild swear word was in her opinion of the parents who didn't give kids vaccines, and that quack doctor who made a lot of money with his fake study).
*For several weeks it was basically, get up for a few minutes to see if dad needed help, then back to lying down.
